It will be obvious to the intelligent and thoughtful that
unless the conclusions recorded in the preceding chapter can in some way be
disproved or got rid of, there is an end of the Daniel controversy. The reader,
therefore, will be interested to know what reply Professor Driver has to give
to them.
After noticing the solution of the Seventy Weeks proposed by
Julius Africanus, the father of Christian chronologers, he proceeds "This view
has been revived recently, in a slightly modified form, by Dr. Robert Anderson,
according to whom the 'year' of Daniel was the ancient luni-solar year of 360
days; reckoning, then, 483 years (= 69 'weeks '), of 360 days each, from I
Nisan, B.C. 445, the date of the edict of Artaxerxes, Dr. Anderson arrives at
the 10th of Nisan in the 18th year of Tiberius Caesar, the day on which our
Lord made His public entry into Jerusalem (Luke xix. 37 if.). Upon this theory,
however, even supposing the objections against B.C. 445 as the terminus a quo
to be waived, the seventieth week remains unexplained."
There is one
objection, I admit, to the B.C. 445 date; it violates the canon of
interpretation, that Scripture never means what it says! But waiving that
point, the only criticism which the highest scholarship has to offer upon my
scheme is that it leaves the seventieth week "unexplained."
(His
reference is to The Coming Prince, or The Seventy Weeks of Daniel, 5th ed. The
first edition of the book appeared in 1880 : the ninth is now current. The
scheme has thus been before the public for many years; and during that time
every detail of it has been subjected to the most searching criticism, both
here and in America; but neither error nor flaw has been detected in
it.)
This objection would be irrelevant even if it were well founded.
But as a matter of fact the book to which Dr. Driver refers his readers deals
fully and in much detail with the seventieth week. One of the blunders of this
controversy is that of supposing that the era of the seventy weeks was to end
either with the advent or the death of Christ. Here the language of Daniel is
explicit: the period "unto Messiah the Prince" was to be, not seventy weeks,
but sixty-nine weeks. The crucifixion is the event which marks the end of the
sixty-ninth week; the seventieth week ends with the restoration of the Jews to
prosperity and blessing. Those who regard that week as cancelled hold an
intelligible position. And the same may be said of those who maintain that it
still awaits fulfilment. But the figment that a prophecy of temporal and
spiritual good for the Jews was fulfilled by their rejection and ruin is one of
the very wildest vagaries of interpretation.
(
Another amazing vagary
of the same type is that Dan. ix. 27 means that our Lord made some sort of
seven years' covenant with the Jews at the beginning of His ministry, and that
it was broken by His death. See Tile Coining Prince, ch. xiv., and especially
pp. 182, 183.)
Upon this point three different opinions prevail.
By some the restoration of the Jews is dismissed as a dream of Hebrew
poetry. Others consider that the Jewish promises were finally forfeited by the
rejection of Christ, and now belong to the Gentile Church. And others again are
bold enough to believe that God will make good every promise and every prophecy
the Bible contains, but that the realisation of the distinctive blessings of
the favoured nation is postponed until the close of this Gentile dispensation.
I am not ashamed to rank myself in this third category; and following the
teaching of the Ante-Nicene Fathers - for this is precisely the sort of
question as to which apostolic tradition is least likely to have been corrupted
- to hold that the seventieth week, and the events pertaining to it, belong to
the future.
But what bearing has all this upon the point at issue? The
question here is whether the vision of the seventy weeks was a mere human
prediction or a Divine prophecy. The popular view of the matter appears to be
that, as the advent of Christ was expected about the time when He actually
appeared, there was nothing extraordinary in a chronological forecast of the
event. But this betrays a strange misconception and confusion of thought. True
it is that the advent of their Messiah was a hope universally cherished by the
Jews - a fact which, as I have urged, proves the error and folly of denying the
Messianic interpretation of the 9th of Daniel. But if His coming was expected
nineteen centuries ago, the hope was based on these very visions. For, apart
from Daniel, Scripture contains no hint of a time limit within which the advent
was to take place. Apart from Daniel, indeed, the theory was plausible that it
would herald the dawn of the seventh millennium of the world's history - an
epoch which, by the Jewish calendar, is even now in the distant future. But
here is a book which specifies the precise date of the presentation and death
of Christ, and the prediction has been fulfilled Had it been fulfilled within
the year, the result might well stagger unbelief. And if the apparent margin of
error had been a month, the explanation would be obvious and adequate, that
Nehemiah does not record the day of the month on which the edict was signed.
But, as a matter of fact, it was fulfilled with absolute accuracy, and to the
very day.
Let us for a moment ignore the controversy about the date of
Daniel - whether in the second century B.C., or in the sixth, and confine our
attention to this simple issue: Could the prediction have been a mere guess by
some learned and pious Jew? If we refer this question to a mathematician he
will ask what data there were to work upon; and on hearing that there were
none, he will tell us that in such circumstances the chance of accuracy would
be so small, and the probability of error so great, that neither the one nor
the other could be expressed arithmetically in figures. The calculation, in
fact, would become lost in infinity.
I would not be understood as urging
this. I presume the banquet at which the edict was issued took place on New
Year's day. Nehemiah began to build the walls on the third day of the fifth
month (Neh. vi. 15). Ezra's journey from Babylon to Jerusalem occupied
precisely four months (Ezra vii. 9), and in "the unchanging east" Nehemiah's
journey from Susa would have occupied as long. I conclude, therefore, that he
set out in the beginning of Nisan.
And this being so, any attempt
to dismiss the facts and figures set forth in the preceding chapter as being
accidental coincidences is not intelligent scepticism, but a crass misbelief
which is sheer credulity.
And this brings us back again to the question,
What is the character, and what the credentials, of the book which contains
this most marvellous vision? The critics themselves admit that the authority of
the Book of Daniel was unchallenged by Jews and Christians alike for at least
two thousand years. It was not that the question of its claims was never
raised; for Porphyry the Neo-Platonist devoted to the subject one of his
discourses against the Christians. But Porphyry's attack evoked no response in
the Christian camp until modern German infidelity began its crusade against the
Bible. The visions of Daniel afforded an unanswerable testimony to the reality
of inspiration, and their voice had to be silenced. No matter to what date the
53rd chapter of Isaiah be assigned, the sceptics would reject the Messianic
interpretation of it.
But if it can be proved that the visions of Daniel
were written in the sixth century B.C., scepticism becomes an impossible
attitude of mind. Therefore, a propagandism designed to degrade the Bible to
the level of a human book found it essential to prove that Daniel was written
after the events it professed to predict.
To attain this end all the great
erudition and patient subtlety for which German scholarship is justly famed,
were prostituted without reserve; and the attack of the apostates was an
immense advance upon the attack of the Pagan. "Apostates," I say advisedly, for
in its origin and purpose the movement was essentially anti-Christian. In
course of time, however, men who had no sympathy with the aims of the
rationalists were led to adopt their conclusions; and in our own day the
sinister origin of the movement is in danger of being forgotten. Its obtaining
recruits among English scholars of repute is a matter within living memory.
First, then, we have the fact that the Book of Daniel, regarded as a classic,
is a work of the very highest character, and that the attack upon it originated
in the exigencies of modern rationalism. But secondly, the critics admit, for
the fact is indisputable, that the Book of Daniel has entered more closely into
the warp and woof of the New Testament than any other portion of the Hebrew
Scriptures. And if they do not admit as unreservedly that it comes to us
expressly accredited by our Lord Himself, it is because the "Higher Criticism"
is purely destructive, and therefore violates at times the principles on which
all true criticism rests. But whether they admit it or not, it is none the less
certain. And as Keil justly says: "This testimony of our Lord fixes the seal of
Divine confirmation on the external and internal evidences which prove the
genuineness of the book." And in view of these overwhelming proofs of its
genuineness, if Hebrew scholars were agreed that its language was not that of
the sixth century B.C., but of a later time, true criticism would seek for an
explanation of that fact. But even those Hebraists who reject the book
contradict one another on this very point; and so Professor Driver falls back
on the alleged presence of two Greek words in the text as settling the whole
question. But in the circumstances this is but a travesty of true criticism,
and proves nothing save the critic's want of practical experience in the art of
sifting and weighing evidence. The case of the philologist having thus
collapsed, the critic still further shakes our confidence in him by turning
aside to borrow from the German rationalists a farrago of objections upon minor
points. Some of these prove on inquiry to be either sheer blunders or mere
quibbles, and most of them are so petty that no competent tribunal would listen
to them, save in the absence of evidence worthy of the name.
(I do
not say this by way of complaint. Regarding the Book of Daniel as no more than
a classic, he treats it, of course, on that footing. I recognise the difference
between what he has written on this subject and such productions, e.g., as the
article in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, of which he is one of the
editors; or the article in Professor Cheyne's rationalistic Encyclopaedia
Biblica. Were Porphyry the Pagan to come to life again he might without reserve
put his name to those articles, and to many another article in both these
works. If this is the sort of food supplied to divinity students nowadays it is
no wonder that so many of them either lapse to rationalism or take refuge in
the superstitions of mere religion.)
If any should think that in my
reply to Professor Driver I have treated these minor points of criticism too
lightly, I would plead the advice once given by a great advocate, always to
ignore the petty details of an opponent's evidence if his case can be shattered
on some vital issue. There is not one of these difficulties and objections to
which I have not given full and fair consideration, and a reply to them will be
found in these pages. But, I repeat, I am prepared to stake the whole case for
Daniel on the two issues I have specified, namely, the inclusion of the book in
the canon, and the fulfilment of its great central vision in Messianic
times.
Behind these is the fact - which in itself ought to satisfy the
Christian - that the book bears the express imprimatur of our Divine Lord.
And we have the further fact that its visions are inseparably interwoven
with the Christian revelation and with the whole scheme of unfulfilled
prophecy. But this last topic I do not now discuss. These pages are not
addressed to students of prophecy, for no student of prophecy doubts the
genuineness of Daniel. But prophecy fulfilled has a voice for every man; and as
Professor Driver's treatise is addressed to men of the world from their own
standpoint,1 I have here, waiving the vantage ground of spiritual truth,
appealed to the judgment of all fair and reasonable men.
Ptolemy the
astronomer was a "Higher Critic." The belief had long prevailed that the sun
was the centre of our system; but he had no difficulty in proving that this
traditional belief was untenable. Once he got men to consider the matter from
their own standpoint all could see the absurdity of supposing that the earth on
which they lived and moved was flying helter-skelter round the sun. And nothing
more was needed but to keep the mind occupied with the many apparent
difficulties of the hypothesis he opposed, to the exclusion of all thought of
the few but insurmountable difficulties of the theory he advocated. The
professors and experts were convinced, the multitude followed suit, and for
more than a thousand years the puerilities of the Ptolemaic System held sway,
with the sanction of infallible science and the blessing of an infallible
Church.
The allegory is a simple one. There is a "Ptolemaic System" of
studying the Bible, which is now struggling for supremacy. Let us, following
the rationalists, insist on shutting out God, and dealing with the Bible from
the purely human standpoint, and then we need but to weary our minds by the
consideration of seeming difficulties of one kind, while we ignore overwhelming
difficulties of another kind, and the victory of that false system will be
assured. For the capacity of fairly considering both sides of a controversy is
not common, and the habit of doing so is rare. Therefore it is that the best
judge is not the legal expert, but the patient, broad-minded arbitrator, who
will calmly hear both sides of a case, and then adjudicate upon it without
prejudice or passion. This brings me to my closing appeal; and I address it
specially to those who are accustomed to take part in any capacity in the
proceedings of our courts of justice. Once again, I ask them to remember that
the question here at issue is essentially one for a judicial inquiry, and that
if they possess experience of such inquiries their fitness for the task is
greater than usually belongs to the professional scholar, however eminent.
Philologists of high repute will tell them that the Book of Daniel is a
forgery. Other philologists of equal fame will assure them that it is genuine.
Let them set the opinion of the one set of experts against that of the other;
and then, turning to consider the question on broader grounds, let them
fearlessly decide it for themselves, uninfluenced by the glamour of great
names.
The religious revolt of the sixteenth century rescued the Bible from
the Priest: God grant that the twentieth century may bring a revolt which shall
rescue it from the Professor and the pundit.